Paul Pogba pledges future to Manchester United and targets title challenge after opening day victory

Paul Pogba pledged to continue giving his best for fans, team-mates and “the people that trust me” in the wake of renewed speculation about his Manchester United future.

Two years after returning to Old Trafford from Juventus in a world-record deal, the 25-year-old is reported to be so unhappy that he has informed executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward of his desire to leave.

United have denied that happened and the same outlet said that Mino Raiola, the player’s agent, had even struck a deal with Barcelona – the kind of interest that the club have vowed to reject.

A tense relationship with Jose Mourinho appears to be at the heart of it. Questions about their relationship were raised last term and the midfielder is said to have been annoyed by his manager’s comments around the World Cup.

Premier League kits 2018-19 RATED and SLATED

1/52 Premier League kits 2018/19

Who has the best kit in the 2018/19 Premier League? We take an incredibly serious look and provide some incredibly serious answers.

Twitter (@chelseafc)

2/52 50. Liverpool away

Absolutely hideous. Possibly the most disturbing thing revealed on the internet since the time Ian Botham accidentally flashed his member to all 433k of his Twitter followers.

New Balance

3/52 49. Tottenham home

Tottenham have been so busy not buying any players this summer they completely forgot to tell Nike they wear all white in Europe. Which will make that grim gradient look even worse. Vom.

Tottenham Hotspur FC

4/52 48. Brighton home

You, an idiot: Oh, this looks a perfectly reasonable home kit. Great job Nike.

Me, a football team wear intellectual: Oh dear, what a stale design with only a semi-bespoke Nike template, with an outdated version of the Aeroswift and an absence of the revolutionary knit pattern rolled out for other teams on their roster.

Nike

5/52 47. Tottenham away

This is EXACTLY the same as the new Barcelona training shirt which, incidentally, is a full £27 cheaper on the Nike website. That’s an awful lot of money for the small outline of a cock.

Nike

6/52 46. Arsenal away

The shirt isn’t bad. The shorts look like the kind of pyjamas your visually-impaired granny might pick out for you at the Edinburgh Woollen Mill for Christmas. Bore off, Nanna!

Puma

7/52 45. Liverpool third

Just look at poor Sadio Mané plotting his course to the nearest branch of Next so that he can get himself out of this muck pronto. The red is too bright, the stripe on the sleeves is too phat and the less said about those weird grey blotches the better.

New Balance

8/52 44. Huddersfield third

‘Oh great, a fluorescent third shirt!’ said nobody, ever. A colour that every club gets foisted with every four years or so, for no discernible reason whatsoever.

Umbro

9/52 43. Arsenal home

Back on your feet, Héctor Bellerín. There’s nothing to celebrate here with this bizarrely boxy effort. Into the sea, get into.

Puma

10/52 42. Manchester United home

Gradients just never look good do they? Also considering Adidas flog these for £120 a pop this looks strangely cheap: switch the Chevrolet sponsor for a FOX AND HOUND stamp in peeling lettering and it could quite easily double up as an old Prostar Sunday League kit.

Adidas

11/52 41. Chelsea home

Eden Hazard, Willian and Thibaut Courtois all took one look at this stripy s***fest and decided they’d be far better off playing their football elsewhere. Yuck.

Nike

12/52 40. Southampton third

Hang on a moment — it’s just the home shirt with two sets of red stripes instead of one! Nice try, Under Armour. Nice try.

Under Armour

13/52 39. Bournemouth third

Ugly collar. Even uglier sponsor. Even uglier set of shadow stripes. It’s a firm no from us, Clive.

Umbro

14/52 38. Arsenal third

Infinitesimally better than that Bournemouth effort, but still a massive disappointment. Looks much better with that big ol’ collar buttoned up, mind.

Puma

15/52 37. Everton away

Whoah! If the lads from Miami Voice put their pistols down for five minutes and decided to form a football team, this is probably what their kit would look like. That’s not a good thing. Also ANGRY BIRDS.

Umbro

16/52 36. Manchester City home

The year is 4564. The human race has spread out far beyond the confines of Planet Earth, colonising distant stars and stellar systems. Aliens walk harmoniously among us. Breathtaking advancements in medicine mean sickness is a thing of the past. And at their swish Oregon headquarters in the United States of America, Nike design Yet. Another. Borderline. Identical. Manchester. City. Kit.

17/52 35. Bournemouth home

18/52 34. Huddersfield away

Hang on one moment, that looks familiar… Beats it’s Bournemouth rival on account of its cleaner collar and that lovely tranquil backdrop.

Umbro

19/52 33. Southampton home

Practical, inoffensive, more than a little bit boring — the Ed Sheeran of 2018/19 Premier League football kits.

Under Armour

20/52 32. Newcastle United third

Very similar to the Arsenal away kit, sans the PE teacher collar and with a different coloured set of stripes on the sleeves. It’s alright, if rather ruined by that eyesore sponsor.

Puma

21/52 31. Southampton away

Genuinely struggling to muster up the enthusiasm to write a sentence on this strict 5/10 effort, so here’s the first 100 words of The Da Vinci Code instead:

“Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Carvaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year-old man heaved the seventieth-century masterpiece from the wall and collapsed backwards in a heap beneath the canvas.

As he had anticipated, a thundering iron gate fell nearby, barricading the entrance to the suite. The parquet floor shook. Far off, an alarm bell began to ring.

The curator lay for a moment, gasping for breath, taking stock. I am still alive. He crawled out from under the canvas and scanned the cavernous space for somewhere to hide.”

Under Armour

22/52 30. Burnley home

No you haven’t imagined it, Burnley’s home strip — for some inexplicable reason — really does feature the Batman logo hidden away under the sponsor on the front of the shirt. We don’t know why. But we like it.

Puma

23/52 29. Brighton away

It’s green. It has a nice collar. The sponsor isn’t annoying. Good, fine, yup. Now be on your way, Brighton away.

Nike

24/52 28. Cardiff away

It’s not going to get any Cardiff fans doing cartwheels around their club shop, but equally it’s hardly likely to get any soiling their underwear in anger, either.

Adidas

25/52 27. Cardiff home

See past image. But blue.

Adidas

26/52 26. Fulham home

And it is at this point that we take our first tentative steps into the realm of ‘nice kits’. Does everything you would want from a Fulham kit. Will look smashing with a beard, pair of deck shoes and whatever else nice middle class people enjoy wearing.

Adidas

27/52 25. Everton third

Oooooooo. Nice. Kind of looks like a Tesco carrier bag on after half a gram. And that’s no bad thing. Also ANGRY BIRDS.

Umbro

28/52 24. Bournemouth away

Okay, so the white shadow stipe gives us nightmarish flashbacks to P.E. (no, Mr Johnson, not another lap around the field, OH GOD NO PLEASE) but the pop of colour on the sleeves is lovely and the shorts are a really nice, rich blue. Woof.

31/52 21. Fulham away

More Adidas sexiness. Really nice colour. Classy bit of gold. Will look smashing under the floodlights.

Adidas

32/52 20. Leicester away

Right, so the last few Adidas kits have been borderline identical, but it is a really smart design. And this colour combo is right up there: industrial Netherlands chic.

Adidas

33/52 19. West Ham away

This shouldn’t really work … and yet it does. It’s the yellow piping which really elevates this from mediocre to mmmmmmm.

Umbro

34/52 18. Wolves home

This literally could not be anymore Wolverhampton Wanderers, could it? Strong.

Adidas

35/52 17. Newcastle United home

Newcastle have had some absolutely shocking home kits in recent years, when you consider the design is about as simple as they come. And so this ranks nice and high on account of not being absolutely awful.

Puma

36/52 NEW ENTRY! Burnley away

Okay we’ll come clean: we completely missed this off the list the first time round and it took Twitter user Simon Gibson to remind us this existed. Completely our bad, this is actually a very nice kit. Everybody loves a bit of moody black honeycomb.

Burnley

37/52 16. West Ham third

Good old Umbro. They’ve given West Ham a pleasingly simplistic white third kit so the likes of Mark Noble and Jack Wilshere can at least close their eyes and pretend they’re playing for England.

Umbro

38/52 15. Huddersfield home

Be honest, you stopped reading these captions after the fourth picture, didn’t you?

Umbro

39/52 14. Burnley third

Sexy af. If the Storm Troopers from Star Wars were given every Wednesday evening off to have a kick about at the Death Star Power League, this is what their kit would look like.

Puma

40/52 13. West Ham home

Vintage. Although by the looks of it Aaron Cresswell has had a rough summer.

Umbro

41/52 12. Tottenham third

Pleasingly different. Just a shame it’s only going to be worn by Spurs twice, both times away from home in the Champions League. In case you’re wondering: a 3-1 loss to Paris Saint-Germain at the Parc des Princes and 2-1 win over Hoffenheim, to secure third place in their group.

FootyHeadlines

42/52 11. Crystal Palace away

Naughty. So very naughty. A sash really does make everything better. Loses some street cred for the sponsor. Other than that: yum.

Puma

43/52 10. Manchester City away

Yesssssss. Takes a much loved — if bloody horrible — away kit from yesteryear and revitalises it with some smooth lines and pinstripes.

49/52 4. Crystal Palace home

50/52 3. Watford home

This could prove controversial and it’s certainly a departure from the norm, but black and yellow stripes will simply never not be cool. Sorry. Cuff me. If that’s wrong I don’t want to be right. Etc.

Adidas

51/52 2. Chelsea away

Would you look at that. Nike proving once and for all that, when push comes to shove, a simple kit will always beat a chaotic one. And what an incredible shade of yellow — so bright sunglasses will have to be made mandatory in the Shed End.

Nike

52/52 1. Manchester United away

And here’s what you’ve all been waiting for, ladies and gentlemen — the best kit of the 2018/19 Premier League season. Just, just look at it. It’s bold. It’s daring. It’s pink. Now somebody please take the shirt I have just ripped from my own back, I need this on my torso immediately.

FootyHeadlines

1/52 Premier League kits 2018/19

Who has the best kit in the 2018/19 Premier League? We take an incredibly serious look and provide some incredibly serious answers.

Twitter (@chelseafc)

2/52 50. Liverpool away

Absolutely hideous. Possibly the most disturbing thing revealed on the internet since the time Ian Botham accidentally flashed his member to all 433k of his Twitter followers.

New Balance

3/52 49. Tottenham home

Tottenham have been so busy not buying any players this summer they completely forgot to tell Nike they wear all white in Europe. Which will make that grim gradient look even worse. Vom.

Tottenham Hotspur FC

4/52 48. Brighton home

You, an idiot: Oh, this looks a perfectly reasonable home kit. Great job Nike.

Me, a football team wear intellectual: Oh dear, what a stale design with only a semi-bespoke Nike template, with an outdated version of the Aeroswift and an absence of the revolutionary knit pattern rolled out for other teams on their roster.

Nike

5/52 47. Tottenham away

This is EXACTLY the same as the new Barcelona training shirt which, incidentally, is a full £27 cheaper on the Nike website. That’s an awful lot of money for the small outline of a cock.

Nike

6/52 46. Arsenal away

The shirt isn’t bad. The shorts look like the kind of pyjamas your visually-impaired granny might pick out for you at the Edinburgh Woollen Mill for Christmas. Bore off, Nanna!

Puma

7/52 45. Liverpool third

Just look at poor Sadio Mané plotting his course to the nearest branch of Next so that he can get himself out of this muck pronto. The red is too bright, the stripe on the sleeves is too phat and the less said about those weird grey blotches the better.

New Balance

8/52 44. Huddersfield third

‘Oh great, a fluorescent third shirt!’ said nobody, ever. A colour that every club gets foisted with every four years or so, for no discernible reason whatsoever.

Umbro

9/52 43. Arsenal home

Back on your feet, Héctor Bellerín. There’s nothing to celebrate here with this bizarrely boxy effort. Into the sea, get into.

Puma

10/52 42. Manchester United home

Gradients just never look good do they? Also considering Adidas flog these for £120 a pop this looks strangely cheap: switch the Chevrolet sponsor for a FOX AND HOUND stamp in peeling lettering and it could quite easily double up as an old Prostar Sunday League kit.

Adidas

11/52 41. Chelsea home

Eden Hazard, Willian and Thibaut Courtois all took one look at this stripy s***fest and decided they’d be far better off playing their football elsewhere. Yuck.

Nike

12/52 40. Southampton third

Hang on a moment — it’s just the home shirt with two sets of red stripes instead of one! Nice try, Under Armour. Nice try.

Under Armour

13/52 39. Bournemouth third

Ugly collar. Even uglier sponsor. Even uglier set of shadow stripes. It’s a firm no from us, Clive.

Umbro

14/52 38. Arsenal third

Infinitesimally better than that Bournemouth effort, but still a massive disappointment. Looks much better with that big ol’ collar buttoned up, mind.

Puma

15/52 37. Everton away

Whoah! If the lads from Miami Voice put their pistols down for five minutes and decided to form a football team, this is probably what their kit would look like. That’s not a good thing. Also ANGRY BIRDS.

Umbro

16/52 36. Manchester City home

The year is 4564. The human race has spread out far beyond the confines of Planet Earth, colonising distant stars and stellar systems. Aliens walk harmoniously among us. Breathtaking advancements in medicine mean sickness is a thing of the past. And at their swish Oregon headquarters in the United States of America, Nike design Yet. Another. Borderline. Identical. Manchester. City. Kit.

17/52 35. Bournemouth home

18/52 34. Huddersfield away

Hang on one moment, that looks familiar… Beats it’s Bournemouth rival on account of its cleaner collar and that lovely tranquil backdrop.

Umbro

19/52 33. Southampton home

Practical, inoffensive, more than a little bit boring — the Ed Sheeran of 2018/19 Premier League football kits.

Under Armour

20/52 32. Newcastle United third

Very similar to the Arsenal away kit, sans the PE teacher collar and with a different coloured set of stripes on the sleeves. It’s alright, if rather ruined by that eyesore sponsor.

Puma

21/52 31. Southampton away

Genuinely struggling to muster up the enthusiasm to write a sentence on this strict 5/10 effort, so here’s the first 100 words of The Da Vinci Code instead:

“Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Carvaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year-old man heaved the seventieth-century masterpiece from the wall and collapsed backwards in a heap beneath the canvas.

As he had anticipated, a thundering iron gate fell nearby, barricading the entrance to the suite. The parquet floor shook. Far off, an alarm bell began to ring.

The curator lay for a moment, gasping for breath, taking stock. I am still alive. He crawled out from under the canvas and scanned the cavernous space for somewhere to hide.”

Under Armour

22/52 30. Burnley home

No you haven’t imagined it, Burnley’s home strip — for some inexplicable reason — really does feature the Batman logo hidden away under the sponsor on the front of the shirt. We don’t know why. But we like it.

Puma

23/52 29. Brighton away

It’s green. It has a nice collar. The sponsor isn’t annoying. Good, fine, yup. Now be on your way, Brighton away.

Nike

24/52 28. Cardiff away

It’s not going to get any Cardiff fans doing cartwheels around their club shop, but equally it’s hardly likely to get any soiling their underwear in anger, either.

Adidas

25/52 27. Cardiff home

See past image. But blue.

Adidas

26/52 26. Fulham home

And it is at this point that we take our first tentative steps into the realm of ‘nice kits’. Does everything you would want from a Fulham kit. Will look smashing with a beard, pair of deck shoes and whatever else nice middle class people enjoy wearing.

Adidas

27/52 25. Everton third

Oooooooo. Nice. Kind of looks like a Tesco carrier bag on after half a gram. And that’s no bad thing. Also ANGRY BIRDS.

Umbro

28/52 24. Bournemouth away

Okay, so the white shadow stipe gives us nightmarish flashbacks to P.E. (no, Mr Johnson, not another lap around the field, OH GOD NO PLEASE) but the pop of colour on the sleeves is lovely and the shorts are a really nice, rich blue. Woof.

31/52 21. Fulham away

More Adidas sexiness. Really nice colour. Classy bit of gold. Will look smashing under the floodlights.

Adidas

32/52 20. Leicester away

Right, so the last few Adidas kits have been borderline identical, but it is a really smart design. And this colour combo is right up there: industrial Netherlands chic.

Adidas

33/52 19. West Ham away

This shouldn’t really work … and yet it does. It’s the yellow piping which really elevates this from mediocre to mmmmmmm.

Umbro

34/52 18. Wolves home

This literally could not be anymore Wolverhampton Wanderers, could it? Strong.

Adidas

35/52 17. Newcastle United home

Newcastle have had some absolutely shocking home kits in recent years, when you consider the design is about as simple as they come. And so this ranks nice and high on account of not being absolutely awful.

Puma

36/52 NEW ENTRY! Burnley away

Okay we’ll come clean: we completely missed this off the list the first time round and it took Twitter user Simon Gibson to remind us this existed. Completely our bad, this is actually a very nice kit. Everybody loves a bit of moody black honeycomb.

Burnley

37/52 16. West Ham third

Good old Umbro. They’ve given West Ham a pleasingly simplistic white third kit so the likes of Mark Noble and Jack Wilshere can at least close their eyes and pretend they’re playing for England.

Umbro

38/52 15. Huddersfield home

Be honest, you stopped reading these captions after the fourth picture, didn’t you?

Umbro

39/52 14. Burnley third

Sexy af. If the Storm Troopers from Star Wars were given every Wednesday evening off to have a kick about at the Death Star Power League, this is what their kit would look like.

Puma

40/52 13. West Ham home

Vintage. Although by the looks of it Aaron Cresswell has had a rough summer.

Umbro

41/52 12. Tottenham third

Pleasingly different. Just a shame it’s only going to be worn by Spurs twice, both times away from home in the Champions League. In case you’re wondering: a 3-1 loss to Paris Saint-Germain at the Parc des Princes and 2-1 win over Hoffenheim, to secure third place in their group.

FootyHeadlines

42/52 11. Crystal Palace away

Naughty. So very naughty. A sash really does make everything better. Loses some street cred for the sponsor. Other than that: yum.

Puma

43/52 10. Manchester City away

Yesssssss. Takes a much loved — if bloody horrible — away kit from yesteryear and revitalises it with some smooth lines and pinstripes.

49/52 4. Crystal Palace home

50/52 3. Watford home

This could prove controversial and it’s certainly a departure from the norm, but black and yellow stripes will simply never not be cool. Sorry. Cuff me. If that’s wrong I don’t want to be right. Etc.

Adidas

51/52 2. Chelsea away

Would you look at that. Nike proving once and for all that, when push comes to shove, a simple kit will always beat a chaotic one. And what an incredible shade of yellow — so bright sunglasses will have to be made mandatory in the Shed End.

Nike

52/52 1. Manchester United away

And here’s what you’ve all been waiting for, ladies and gentlemen — the best kit of the 2018/19 Premier League season. Just, just look at it. It’s bold. It’s daring. It’s pink. Now somebody please take the shirt I have just ripped from my own back, I need this on my torso immediately.

FootyHeadlines

Pogba only returned to training at the start of the week after helping France to win the tournament but he was thrust into the starting line-up on Friday and given the captain’s armband, when his penalty set United on course for a 2-1 win against Leicester.

“Of course it makes me proud, it makes me happy to wear this (armband) at a big club like Manchester United,” he said.

Paul Pogba celebrates scoring United’s opener (AP)

“Like I always say, I always give my best for the fans, for my team-mates, for the people that trust me.”

Put to Pogba that it looked like he was fully committed to United after a lot of things had been said about his position at the club over recent days, he added: “Well, like I said, I always give my best for the fans, for the team-mates and for the people that trust me.”

Pogba’s focus on trust seemed pointed, as did his post on Twitter shortly after the match.

Jose Mourinho got Manchester United off to a winning start (Getty)

“I’ll always give my best to the fans and my teammates no matter what’s going on,” he wrote.

All does not appear well behind the scenes, despite Mourinho saying on the eve of the Leicester match that when the media “repeat 1,000 times that my relationship with my players is not good, it’s a lie that (is) repeated 1,000 times”.

But it is not just the manager’s relationship with United’s players that has come under inspection, considering he was irked by executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward failing to strengthen the squad before the transfer deadline.

Fred was one of three summer signings in a disappointing window for United (Bongarts/Getty Images)

“Of course the performance wasn’t the best, but it’s better to start like this and finish well than start very well and finish bad.

“We know the players, and myself as well, didn’t have a lot of training and we played a game.

“We knew we were not going to be fit, 100 per cent, but the most important (thing) was to start well the Premier League.”

Luke Shaw has always had a testing relationship with Jose Mourinho (AP)

Pogba’s early penalty was followed by Luke Shaw – a player who had endured a testy relationship with Mourinho – scoring his first goal for the club, meaning Jamie Vardy’s stoppage-time effort was little more than a consolation.

It was a decent start to the season considering the number of injury and fitness worries that United had to contend with, but Friday’s skipper is not getting carried away.

“So, it’s pretty early to speak about this now,” Pogba said when asked of their chances of success this term.

“We started with Andreas Pereira and Fred, and they played very well today.

“With the players that we have…of course we’re Manchester United, we have to look at the top of the league. That’s obvious. I mean, Manchester United, we have to show on the pitch, we have to play well, we have to be focused and we need people to trust us.”